The true story

I’ve been talking a lot recently about this sector owning its own future. An article in this morning’s edition of The Times demonstrates that if we are not bold about telling our story, people will make up their own version instead.

We’ve been here before of course. 

It is a sad reality that there are those who are happy to disregard the successes of housing associations in favour of their own narrative.  I’m not alone in my reaction. Emma Maier, editor of this publication, was quick to pull up The Times this morning on using their survey data in a misleading manner. 

Indeed, one of the leading journalists at the magazine said that the data they had compiled was used in a “studiously uninformed way” by looking at one bit of data in isolation from the bigger picture – and I couldn’t agree more.  

Today, we reply robustly to the article with the facts.

The true story of housing associations is that we are building and are vital contributors on that front. 

We consistently build new homes and our ambition to build comes through in Inside Housing’s figures – with the development pipeline of the Top 50 housing associations increasing by 7,000 homes.

That’s 175,000 new homes for our country by 2020. Where new homes are most needed we build more – in London, 65% of all new homes were delivered by housing associations over the last five years.  And our progress is accelerating, with building starts boosted by 23% this year – all in the same period as an unprecedented level of change in the operating environment. 

We provide secure homes for five million people. And we do so much more. We manage thousands of homes for the elderly and disabled, providing high quality and complex care to over 400,000 people. We regenerate housing stock in desperate need of improvement in some of the most deprived communities in the UK.  

We build, yes – but above and beyond that, we create and support communities and are the champions and protectors of some of the most vulnerable people in the country. 

This is only possible due to the talented people we have staffing and leading our members through tough times. 

The disgraceful attack on some of our colleagues today marks a low point in simplistic commentary on the sector.  It takes into account neither the full nature of the work that housing associations do nor their chief executives’ role in making that happen. So we need to make our own voice heard and make our contribution impossible to ignore. 

This is our story, and we are best placed to tell it. We cannot surrender our role in doing so. The housing crisis is among the most prominent political issues of current times, and our voice cannot be absent from the debate about how to solve it. It must be our priority to tell the story of our work to end the housing crisis. By owning our future we can safeguard it, and ensure that we can continue to provide the homes our country needs.

David Orr, chief executive, National Housing Federation